Rents Go Up on Moscow Apartments

Rental prices in Moscow grew as much as 23 percent in August, the DOKI rental agency said on its web site, but there will be few tenants willing to rent at such high prices.

“The prices have grown because of the expectations of new potential tenants such as students and labor migrants coming to Moscow in August,” the agency’s chief executive, Valery Barenets, said on its web site last week.

The cheapest housing was in the Perovo region, with one-room apartments averaging 17,000 rubles a month, while the most expensive one-room apartments were located near Pushkinskaya, where they averaged 238,000 rubles a month.

“We have seen a 5 to 10 percent growth in rental prices in Moscow,” said Oleg Repchenko, head of IRN, a real estate analytical center. “But we see no rush on the customers’ side, so we expect the market to roll back its positions over the next two months.” In previous years, seasonal growth in rental prices seen during the fall was 5 percent to 20 percent, IRN said.

“Students and migrants who came to Moscow this fall won’t be able to afford renting at higher prices,” Repchenko said. “So the landlords will have to pull the prices back down.”

“We expect the prices to retreat by at least half of their current growth rate by mid-September,” he said, adding that new residents in the capital preferred to split the rent with their friends or colleagues.